In Kenya, blood allocated for transfusions is stored in several centralized blood banks throughout the country. The job of a central blood repository is to ensure the dozens of neighboring local district hospitals are always stocked with an adequate amount of blood to meet the transfusion needs in the event of an emergency. However, most of these local district hospitals lack reliable electricity and phone lines.
Without a consistent method of communicating with the local district hospitals, the central repositories are unable to stay updated about where blood is most needed.
BloodBank SMS was developed to improve the communication between local district hospitals and Kenya's centralized blood banks. The system enables medical workers at the local district hospitals to provide information about their remaining blood stock directly to their centralized blood bank.
Medical workers from each district hospital can simply send a free text message to the service detailing the amounts of each blood type remaining. Real-time blood levels for each local hospital are graphically displayed on a web-based interface designed for administrators at the central blood repositories. Additionally, should the blood levels at a local hospital get below a critical threshold, the system automatically sends SMS alerts to the appropriate individuals at the centralized blood bank.
References / Past Projects
Bloodbank SMS is a project of EPROM, part of the Program for Developmental Entrepreneurship within the MIT Design Laboratory, which aims to foster mobile phone-related research and entrepreneurship.
